


Gifts of a Grimm

by paburke



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paburke/pseuds/paburke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No, this Grimm does not give weapons as gifts, but does give gifts made from weapons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Season Three-ish, early season four of Grimm, Christmas

He had been working on the wood carvings for weeks, snatching a moment here and there. He got the bulk of the work done during stake-outs. Hank would roll his eyes, but Nick could see his jealousy. (The Griffin Nick had carved for him was completed and stained and drying at home.) Trubel’s mistletoe –with especially deadly looking leaves- was done, as was the vet’s bag with kittens crawling out of it for Juliette. The Christmas ornament for Monroe and Rosalee was giving Nick fits. He had to get it done before tomorrow. He could stain it before going to bed.

He was surprised the more Grimms hadn’t indulged in carving. After all it was artistic rendering plus knives, though tiny. Nick found it rather meditative. If he survived to retire, he would easily make this his fulltime hobby.

He held out his latest attempt under the streetlight and examined all the angles. For once, he was appreciating all the times the Captain sent him out of the office to sit in the car for hours.

“Quit fussing,” Hank grunted. “It looks good… really good,” he admitted. “But those two would have been thrilled with either of two other representations you did.”

“It’s their first Christmas. They should have something special to represent it.” And it really should be anatomically correct. It’d be easier to recognize the animals if he painted it, but that felt like a cop-out. 

Hank shook his head. “Knowing Monroe. That little do-dad will probably find a place of honor somewhere in their house and will not be packed away after Christmas.”

Nick eyed the carving critically. He had a wolf and a fox nose to nose and side by side. The wolf dwarfed the fox protectively, but the little fox didn’t look the least bit helpless. He felt a little ridiculous making their tails entwine into the shape of a heart, but Juliette had loved the idea. The animals looked lifelike and calm, peaceful and hopefully in love. He nodded, finally satisfied. “How long until McConnell and Khera get here?”

“They’ve been here for twenty minutes.”

Nick jerked his head around, immediately spotting the other undercover car. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“You were almost done and it was your best one yet. You’re getting scarily good at that. How did Bud like his beaver with the plumbing tools?”

“He gets his last,” Nick said rather fiercely. “If I delivered that first, the whole Wesen community would know what I’ve been working on within the hour. That would ruin Monroe’s surprise.”

Hank chuckled and started the car. “Well, if you’re trying to improve your image in the Wesen community, that’ll make an impression.”

Nick looked slightly guilty. “I thought about that after. It’d be nice if the non-murdering Wesen didn’t assume that I was going to murder _them_ on sight, but I really started because I thought it’d be a nice surprise.”

“And because you needed to give Renard something that he couldn’t buy.”

“That too,” Nick agreed.

“So what _did_ Renard think of the Royal Seal on the back of the Portland Police Badge?”

“He was shocked. And contemplative, but I think he appreciates having a seal of his own, that isn’t the same as the family that tried to kill him.”

“I bet.” Hank pulled to a stop in front of Nick’s house.

“I’ll see you tomorrow? At Monroe and Rosalee’s?”

“Count on it.” Hank promised. “I really want to see their reaction to your ornament.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leaving behind a legacy.

Monroe and Rosalee both loved their gift. Hank was pleased with his small griffin but he didn’t exclaim his opinions like the Wesen couple. Rosalee was the one to say that it was never getting packed away with the other holiday cheer and Monroe concurred before she had even finished her declaration. Nick was a little embarrassed with all the comments. He had just wanted to do something nice for his friends. To avoid more gushing, he turned down pie at Bud’s house when he dropped off the gift. (Bud left him a voicemail thanking him for the gift that exceeded the time limits for recording).

Nick had hoped that would be the end of it. The looks he was getting from the Wesen were more inquiring than fearful and he knew Bud was to blame. What he didn’t know was that Bud was taking the little ornament with him everywhere and telling every Wesen he met that the Grimm had gifted it. And not only that but _made it_ to gift it.

If certain Wesen thought that it meant that this Grimm was soft and not up to the challenge of keeping the trouble makers in check –like a certain Lowen who sneered, “I saw that fruo fruo you made for the Eisbiber.” Well, Nick easily and toothily answered, “I am good with knives.”

He was rather horrified when Juliette mentioned, “You know everyone will be expecting something just as perfect –if not more- next year.” 

Nick thought all this and more when Monroe asked to meet for coffee and handed him a picture book on the history of mantle clocks. “You and I should make a clock.”

Nick blinked. “I don’t know anything about how to make a clock.”

Monroe rolled his eyes. “That’s why I said ‘we.’ I’ll do the innards and you do the frame and decorative carving.”

“Why?” Nick had never _ever_ had a desire to make a clock. “That’s a big project. It’ll take months. I don’t have that kind of time. You don’t have that kind of time. Why would you want to make a clock… with me?”

Monroe looked up from his coffee, faced him and exposed all of his emotions. Nick would have to blind to miss the blatant honesty revealed. “Because I’m a Blutbad and you’re a Grimm and let’s face it, we’re both known for destroying and I want to leave behind more than… a blood bath. We’re not Eisbibers that build roads and bridges and houses and lodges. I want a clock to pass down to my childrens’ children that they will be proud to say, ‘This one was made by a Blutbad and his Grimm friend.’ And I think it would be cool to have a clock in the trailer amidst all the books of Wesen death, one that your childrens’ children can point at and say ‘That was when the Grimm broke away from the mindless… bigotry and changed the entire Wesen world’.”

Nick took a moment to catch his breath. “Oh.” By following the example of his ancestors, he had been recording his encounters with dangerous Wesen, but since he was keeping his personal life out of the books, he wasn’t recording the good events. He wasn’t leaving behind a written history of being different. He needed to start doing that. He wanted Grimms that followed after to have more restraint and be less… murderous. He wanted to be an example to more than Trubel.

Nick pulled Monroe’s book closer and nodded decisively. He flipped the book open and said, “Let’s do this. We need to make two.”

Monroe cheered and flipped to a page somewhere in the middle to a specific –rather ornate- example. “So, I thinking…”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick's gifts are having far more impact then he could have imagined.

For all of Sean Renard’s childhood, reading body language was necessary for survival. It was useful as cop and even more useful as the Royal of Portland. If he had the opportunity, he would always observe body language before walking into a room. So when he stopped at the door of the Spice Shoppe to glance in the window, he couldn’t help but read the body language of the Grimm and the Blutbad inside.

The two were arguing over a pile of wood and gears, the Blutbad’s arms were flailing. Nick quirked his lips and answered. He knew he was going to win the argument and by the way Monroe instantly paused, Nick had. Monroe’s started grinning. Sean decided he wanted to hear this conversation. The two looked his way as he opened the Shoppe’s door, even before the bell above had a chance to chime.

Thankfully, neither one seemed inclined to stop their argument, even with Sean as witness.

“Secret compartment?” Monroe said. “You win. I’ll find another place for that gear.”

“I thought you’d see it my way,” Nick told him drolly. Nick nodded at Sean. “Need something?”

“A few things,” Sean handed the ingredient list to Monroe. The Blutbad nodded his way through the list and started collecting the items. “What’s this?” Sean nodded his head at the seemingly messy workbench.

Nick tidied it up a bit, not because he was embarrassed about the mess but so he wouldn’t look Sean in the eyes. “Monroe and I are working on a project.” 

The Grimm probably would have left it at that, but Monroe bragged, “We,” he emphasized the word by setting a glass jar down on the bench, “are working together to make mantle clocks for our respective families.”

Sean was impressed. They were actively creating a physical representation of the cooperative effort between a Grimm and a Blutbad, to be passed to future generations. Besides the remembrance they were giving their children, they would be creating a unique object for collectors of the Wesen world. “I want one,” he stated. “No, I want a grandfather clock, with _several_ secret compartments.”

Nick tilted his head forward and sighed. He had probably guessed Sean’s response to their project and he knew how tight Rosalee's finances were since a Grimm had showed up at her wedding. Wesen were avoiding the Spice Shoppe to avoid the Grimm who, admittedly, visited often. A large cash infusion would definitely help.

Monroe went straight for haggling mode. “Woah! That’s hours and hours of Nick’s time –it’ll take him months! Maybe a year!- and we would have to charge you close to fifty thousand dollars.”

Sean knew that the higher the cost the more likely Nick would consent to carving it, for Rosalee's sake. “That’s a fair price. I want some of the icons you carved on the Royal Seal of my Christmas present,” Sean said. "I'll put down a cash payment -half- when you buy the lumber."

Monroe paused and looked between Nick and Sean several times, obviously biting his tongue. He knew the ramifications of a Grimm creating and giving a Royal a Seal, even if Nick had been blissfully unaware.

Sean wasn’t going to address that now, besides, “Monroe, you’re going to have to pay Nick from your account. I can’t have any financial tie to Nick. I also want a clock locket for my mother. Something small and tasteful.”

“A grand,” Monroe tossed out.

“Agreed. Of course, I’d like to have the locket first. How soon can you finish?”

“Two months,” Nick finally said. He would probably get it done much sooner.

It would be in time for his mother’s birthday. “Excellent. Monroe, if you can have the ingredients listed there delivered to my house by this afternoon, that would be best.” Sean wanted to leave before Nick found excuses to not carve the clocks. “Gentlemen,” he nodded his farewell and walked out the door.

The door was not fully shut and he heard Monroe hiss, “ _You carved him a Royal Seal?!?_ ”

Sean hid a smile. That was a productive stop.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The swing of the pendulum.

Within two months, Nick had finished carving both the hexenbiest locket and Monroe’s mantle clock. The former featured tiny ingredients that could be used in a protection spell –and if applied with a heavy hand, the same spell could be used to smother a person to death. The latter featured a fox and a wolf facing each other in the play posture –front paws stretched out, head down but looking toward each other , butt up and tail curved toward the head. The clock fit nicely between the two animals. On Rosalee’s side, Nick had added a representation of her glass specimen bottles and on Monroe’s side, a pocket watch. The secret compartment was on Rosalee’s side.

After a long historical lecture about the how the Royal families could not have become the Royal families without physical proof of cooperation from the local Grimm (that they would show any Grimm traveling through their kingdom) and did Nick really want to make the established Royal families even more upset with him? Nick started the grandfather clock. Nick had spent most of his time working on the locket considering whether or not he wanted to help Renard build a kingdom in Portland. The Grimms had evolved from policing the Wesen to murdering them centuries ago and the Royals had evolved from protecting the Wesen in their kingdom to using them as cannon fodder. In the end, Nick decided that he would continue to help Renard build a safe haven for Wesen. He would build Renard the grandfather clock. He didn’t need to give Renard a warning about abusing the privilege. Renard understood the locket to be both a warning to himself (Nick would not hesitate to be either protection or death incarnate, depending on Renard’s actions) and to those who came in contact with his mother. Elizabeth Lascelles, also, was equally comfortable as an agent of protection or death incarnate. 

Nick hadn’t started on his own mantle clock yet. He knew that worried Monroe, and it wasn’t because Nick didn’t want physical evidence of their collaboration but the Grimm hadn’t decided what he wanted to exhibit to his own offspring. He knew that he didn’t want a collection of weapons, or even Wesen that he and Monroe had dispatched together. He didn’t want a Grimm face on one side of the clock and a Blutbad face on the other, which would be too easy to misinterpret. Besides, he would be working off second hand information on what a Grimm looked like to the Wesen. He was stuck and he preferred to have two projects to work on at the same time. His indecision on his own mantle clock was frustrating.

Then Bud came in to the Spice Shoppe on behalf of the Lodge. The Beaver Kin had heard about Renard’s clock and wanted to commission a grandfather clock for themselves. They were glad that it’d take months to complete. They had enough for the down payment but were planning on having bake sales and craft exhibits to raise the rest of the money for Monroe and Nick’s collaboration. Nick knew immediately what he wanted to do for the Eisbibers. He was going to create a grandfather clock that looked like a tree about to fall because of two or three beavers gnawing at its base. The trick would be to convey the idea of ‘leaning’ while keeping the clock parts perpendicular enough for the pendulum of the clock to work. He couldn’t wait to get started.

While working on the two grandfather clocks, Nick finally clued into what he wanted to carve with his own mantle clock: he wanted a representation of what the various Wesen had freely given to him, the Grimm. The work would be intricate and detailed and would probably take longer than a grandfather clock, but it would be worth it in the end. Evidence of the good that Wesen had shared with Nick; that was the gift he wanted to give future Grimms.


End file.
